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Contributor I
May 7, 2021
Answered

One Sonos Amp per channel

  • May 7, 2021
  • 19 replies
  • 1572 views

has anyone used two sonos amps to power a pair of speakers, one for the left and one for the right to eliminate speaker wires ?

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Best answer by Corry P

 Bruce, I see no issues other than expense, higher footprint for two amps and two power cords, as I have also pointed out in my preceding post. The OP is looking to do exactly this by the way - if you see his first post. He probably hasn't realised the consequences we have pointed out. Or he may have power outlets behind the speakers, so that speaker cords are not a visible issue.

Sonos will be happy to support this because it means more sales:-). And there is nothing that they need to specially do to support what is basically just a grouped set up of two amps.

Over to @Corry P 

I agree - I see no problems with this, if cost and electricity usage aren’t issues.

The Amps would protect themselves from any overload, and I can’t see that happening with only one speaker connected. 

The two grouped Amps would play in sync.

I also agree that there are better options, but we don’t know exactly what @clweed needs from their setup.

19 replies

melvimbe
May 7, 2021

I’m guessing you mean that you would have the amp very close to the speaker it’s wired to, so you don’t have long speaker cables.  But the answer would be no, since you can’t bond two amps together, one for each stereo channel.  

If you’re trying to eliminate speaker wires, why not get a pair of Sonos Ones or Fives?  No speaker wire and you’re saving a lot of money.  If this is for an outdoor application, then perhaps 2 Moves makes more sense?

Danny
May 7, 2021

Interesting but expensive idea:-)

Wire the left terminal of one amp and the right of the other, to respective speakers, and then group the amps. Should work.

clweedAuthor
Contributor I
May 7, 2021

Interesting but expensive idea:-)

Wire the left terminal of one amp and the right of the other, to respective speakers, and then group the amps. Should work.

That is what I’m thinking, I'm wondering if there would be any delay between the two amps messing with the stereo. I could keep my speakers and eliminate a lot of components and wiring

Airgetlam
May 7, 2021

There would be zero guaranty that the stream each one is getting would be in sync. It could be, it might not be. I’ve often run two different streams of the same thing in different rooms, and more often than not, they’re slightly out of sync. It’s likely why Sonos uses a group coordinator when playing in multiple rooms, rather than setting each speaker to grab the same stream multiple times, not to mention the extra bandwidth that would be necessary. 

It would be an interesting experiment, but it’s certainly outside of the normal usage pattern, and I’d expect zero support from Sonos on it. 

Bruce
melvimbe
May 7, 2021

Interesting but expensive idea:-)

Wire the left terminal of one amp and the right of the other, to respective speakers, and then group the amps. Should work.

That is what I’m thinking, I'm wondering if there would be any delay between the two amps messing with the stereo. I could keep my speakers and eliminate a lot of components and wiring

 

It depends on your audio  source. If one of the amps is connected to a TV, then that TV will play the audio immediately while the other is delayed.    But if you aren’t using TV as a source, I still think you’d be better off, and save money by using Sonos speakers.

Danny
May 7, 2021

I think it will work just fine if used for audio. But two amps means two power cords, more footprint, and still some speaker cable. Why not try to place one amp close to one speaker and run speaker cable discreetly to the other speaker?

May 8, 2021

There would be zero guaranty that the stream each one is getting would be in sync. It could be, it might not be.

Why would it not be? The two amps would be in one group, that would be in perfect sync. And I see no reason why Sonos won’t support this - the only concern is are the two unwired speaker terminals, but these are solid state amps, so that isn't a problem.

Maybe @Corry P can reassure on this aspect. Or not! 

Airgetlam
May 8, 2021

They wouldn’t be in one group. You can not set up a single Sonos device to be a mono right or mono left stream. You’d have to, I think, set them up as a stereo stream, and then force the use of one set of posts, rather than setting the device to mono. That ‘mono’ setup includes both left and right, which would defeat the intended purpose of this set up. 
 

I guess you could group them in the Sonos app at that point, so yea, you’re right. But this setup isn’t going to do much of the “eliminate wires’ that I perceive the OP was looking to do, as you’re just replacing speaker wires with power cords. It certainly isn’t a supported method of using Sonos, and will likely provide a substantial set of issues in its set up, not to mention expensive, as Danny and you have indicated. 

Bruce
May 8, 2021

 Bruce, I see no issues other than expense, higher footprint for two amps and two power cords, as I have also pointed out in my preceding post. The OP is looking to do exactly this by the way - if you see his first post. He probably hasn't realised the consequences we have pointed out. Or he may have power outlets behind the speakers, so that speaker cords are not a visible issue.

Sonos will be happy to support this because it means more sales:-). And there is nothing that they need to specially do to support what is basically just a grouped set up of two amps.

Over to @Corry P 

pwt
Virtuoso
May 8, 2021

But the answer would be no, since you can’t bond two amps together, one for each stereo channel.

You can not set up a single Sonos device to be a mono right or mono left stream.

 

Well, you kind of can, but it wouldn’t be supported.

It’s possible using SoCo-CLI’s stereo pairing function: sonos amp1 pair amp2

amp1 would be the left channel, amp2 the right. Both speaker outputs of amp1 would play the left channel, and of amp2 the right.

https://github.com/avantrec/soco-cli#grouping-and-stereo-pairing

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